Recently, both in Japan and in other countries, as lifestyle varies, the affluence and pleasure and the approach to and effect on emotion brought about by fragrance have attracted attention as factors to improve the life quality. At the same time, there has been demanded development of fragrances that are highly safe and can attain highly significant effects when mixing small amounts in view of the burden on the environment.
Synthetic fragrances having a polycyclic structure and a woody and amber-like odor have been known to bring about a odor reminiscent of natural wood or ambergris and additionally to effectively persist, even with small applied amounts, on various objects such as the skin, hair and clothes so as to enhance the value thereof from the viewpoints of both preference and functionality.
Typical examples of such synthetic fragrances include acetyl cedrene, isolongifolanone and cedryl methyl ether; however, all these are prepared by using natural wood as raw materials, and hence excessive logging causes various environmental problems such as flood. Accordingly, demand for synthetic fragrances prepared by using raw materials other than wood has increased.
G. Ohloff et al. have long paid attention to the decalin skeleton in relation to compounds having a polycyclic structure, and have reported that 9-nordrimanol having four methyl groups develops an odor most resembling that of amber on the basis of a synthetic study on decalin alcohols substituted with many methyl groups; however, decalin alcohols substituted with five or more methyl groups or decalin alcohols with ethyl groups introduced thereinto are odorless, or have created no interest (Non-patent Document 1). Additionally, no industrial production method has yet been developed for any of these compounds, and none of these compounds has so far been utilized as a fragrance.
Additionally, 1,2,3,4,4a,5,6,7-octahydro-2,5,5-trimethyl-2-naphthalenol having an octalin skeleton similar to that of decalin skeleton and hydroxy groups, and having been used as a fragrance smells strong and hence can display its effect in a small mixing amount; however, this compound has a strong animalic odor and hence has a drawback of being poor in general versatility.
Similarly, 7-acetyl-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octahydro-1,1,6,7-tetramethylnaphthalene having an octalin skeleton and an acetyl group and being prepared from myrcene, a natural raw material, has general versatility, but gives out a rough and dry smell, and hence has a drawback that such features of this compound are hardly compatible with fragrances such as perfumes required to have a high quality and an impression of being differentiated.
On the other hand, 8-drimanol having a steric structure represented by formula (1a) was not studied in the study of fragrance compounds having a decalin skeleton carried out by G. Ohloff et al.; in Non-patent Document 1, (9βH)-driman-8β-ol having a different steric structure has been reported to be odorless, but no additional description on the odor of driman-8β-ol is found therein.

Additionally, J. R. Hlubucek found that Nicotiana tabacum L. in Greek tobacco contains the compound represented by formula (1a), and tried to prepare the compound represented by formula (1a) from drim-7-en-11-ol, but the odor of the prepared compound was not described and the importance thereof as a fragrance has not been known (Non-patent Document 2).
C. R. Enzell obtained a mixture containing 8-drimanol through a bioconversion of (z)-abienol, but no description is found on the aspect of this mixture as a fragrance (Non-patent Document 3).
[Non-patent Document 1] Croatica Chemica Acta, 58(4), p. 491 (1985)
[Non-patent Document 2] Acta Chemica Scandinavica, B 28, No. 3 p. 289 (1974)
[Non-patent Document 3] Acta Chemica Scandinavica, 49, p. 375 (1995)